El Tiempo reimagines itself as an AdTech company for advertisers

By Michelle Palmer Jones

INMA

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

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Rebranding for El Tiempo in Colombia doesn’t mean just a new look for its products or Web site. It means completely reimagining how it looks at its role as a publisher to an AdTech company, Diego Vallejo, chief digital officer and executive digital manager of editorial for El Tiempo, during the recent INMA Latin-American Conference.

El Tiempo spends most of its time and resources with software, tools, and products that help advertisers reach their goals, which in turn helps El Tiempo reach its own, Vallejo said: “This has to do with how we have transformed ourselves from the technology strategy of a publisher of a news media editor to a relevant actor in technology.”

El Tiempo is a solutions-based news company, coming up with ways that go beyond branding and focus more on performance of the advertisers and El Tiempo itself.

Diego Vallejo, CEO and executive digital manager for El Tiempo, detailed the Colombian advertising market.
Diego Vallejo, CEO and executive digital manager for El Tiempo, detailed the Colombian advertising market.

The transformation of how the company saw itself and how it performed started in 2015 with a dedication to prioritising data generation and systems.

It began with a need to produce better products and publish better materials and has morphed into where they are today —working toward becoming a leader in the use of AI and how it’s transforming its tech stack to benefit business.

No longer content with large exposure brand campaigns, advertisers were pushing El Tiempo to give them more results. They wanted to hyper target and hyper focus on specific segments. With the gradual death of third-party cookies on search engines, El Tiempo staff knew they’d need to be at the forefront of data collection and analysis. 

“You really need to be able to have technical capabilities at the segmentation level and the entire AdTech to be able to see results that are relevant and cost efficient for the company that do not divert income from traditional models,” Vallejo said.

Staff spent time and resources gathering as much first-party data they could based on visits, clicks, products, payments, and downloads.

A big part of Vallejo’s job is to identify what the future looks like for the company. He began to step into the world of retail media where advertisers could have their ads placed on El Tiempo’s media network. They could collect even more data this way through the ad campaigns, marketing campaigns, registrations, clicks per minute, and they could further build their data strategy with this.

Knowing just how much Latin America is influenced by the U.S. market, Vallejo took careful consideration of the fact that research shows retail media search will capture US$1 of every US$6 spent on digital ads in the U.S. by 2028.

He also acknowledged six different formats and tools are the main parts of a retail advertiser’s strategy: on-site, paid search shopping ads, social commerce, off-site, CRM, and traditional in-store. Of particular interest is realising off-site retail media ad spending will surpass ecommerce channel display ad spending this year.

The strategy to better help advertisers it to better understand and reach audiences.
The strategy to better help advertisers it to better understand and reach audiences.

When it comes to the different campaigns of retail media and what makes them either a success or a complete bust, knowing the audience is crucial, he said:

“Are we buying or are we building products? What are our capabilities? At the end of the day, everything is about our audiences. The publishers are the experts. We have this ‘know how’ we have to tap into. We analyse our active users. We know where they live, work, and if they have kids. We analyse everything. What hobbies do they have? Then, using a single database, we convert it into useful information and create what we call a diamond record of the person.”

The data journey isn’t one El Tiempo is taking on its own. They’ve taken advantage of features like Google One Tap, which lets users sign into a Web site or create an account with a single click. The idea is to make it as painless as possible for the user to become a registered member. El Tiempo went from seeing 4,000 to 5,000 users a day to upwards of 60,000 users they can authenticate. 

Google One Tap allows users sign into a Web site or create an account with a single click.
Google One Tap allows users sign into a Web site or create an account with a single click.

As it simultaneously works on consolidating its audiences, El Tiempo will spend a lot of time in the next couple of years identifying and evolving its second-party data strategy. They’re already working with companies like Mathilde Ads, which is a platform that will optimise digital ad purchasing without depending on the use of cookies. 

“I told you at the beginning that I see my role as trying to propose possible futures for the company and a possible future that we see for this also has to do with those advertising alliances,” Vallejo said.

About Michelle Palmer Jones

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